By Debbie Schlussel
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that this isn’t front page news. After all, the media has to protect the Veep of the Obamessiah.
Still, for those not interested in being shielded, it should be headline news that a fund operated by Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and his brother, James, had millions of dollars worth of dealings with Stanford Financial Group and another Stanford-controlled entity. In fact, Stanford entities provided the Bidens the seed money for their business and invested millions in and brought many clients (and their money) to the Bidens’ company.

A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden’s family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud.

The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens’ Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, according to a lawyer for Paradigm. Paradigm Global Advisors is owned through a holding company by the vice president’s son, Hunter, and Joe Biden’s brother, James.
The fund has offered to turn over the $2.7 million investment it received from Mr. Stanford’s firm in 2007 to a court-appointed receiver in the SEC’s civil fraud case involving Mr. Stanford, according to Paradigm’s attorney, Marc X. LoPresti. . . .
The vice president’s office had no comment.

Shocker.

A Paradigm marketer, Jeffrey Schneider, confirmed accounts provided by others that he brought in the Stanford business. Stanford would bring clients to the fund and Paradigm would manage it, according to Mr. LoPresti. The fund is mentioned on the Web site of a Stanford entity called Stanford Trust Co. as one of its “investment management strategies.”
Mr. LoPresti said Stanford entities put up the $2.7 million in seed money and marketed the fund. SEC records show the fund, which was launched in June 2007, had 104 investors as of Nov. 10, 2008, with assets of $49.8 million. Paradigm Global, of New York, manages portfolios of hedge funds with a total of about $270 million in assets.
Under an agreement, Stanford was entitled to share in a portion of the fund’s management and performance fees, Mr. LoPresti said. “That’s all I’m going to say on the fee side of things,” he said.
Mr. LoPresti said the fund last week deposited about $2.7 million that Stanford contributed to the fund into a special account. He said Paradigm offered to turn it over to a receiver appointed last week by a U.S. District Court judge in Texas to take control of the assets of Mr. Stanford and his companies. The attorney said Paradigm hadn’t yet heard back. The receiver, Ralph S. Janvey, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
In a statement Monday, Mr. Janvey said mutual funds not directly held in Stanford Financial Group accounts should be released from a court-ordered asset freeze.
Mr. LoPresti said the Paradigm Stanford fund is unaffected by the freeze. He said the fund lost 9.5% in 2008 and is up 0.1% this year.
The Bidens’ 2006 purchase of Paradigm has sparked litigation. In December, James and Hunter Biden settled a lawsuit brought in New York state court by a onetime business partner, Anthony Lotito Jr. Mr. Lotito alleged the Bidens owed him money from the Paradigm purchase. In court filings, he also contended that James Biden asked him to help Hunter Biden, who had been a Washington lobbyist, get into the hedge-fund business. Mr. Lotito alleged that Joe Biden was concerned about the impact his son’s lobbying could have on his planned 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr. Biden did run for president but dropped out of the race.
A lawyer for the Bidens has denied Mr. Lotito’s claim that the Paradigm purchase was prompted by Joe Biden’s desire to get his son out of the lobbying business.

Deny, deny, deny. But it has the ring–and stench–of truth. That’s why only a Biden lawyer is talking and not the Vice Presidential spokesman.
Bottom line: The son and bro of a then-Senator and now-Veep don’t just get millions to invest “just ‘cuz,” especially when the two have zero experience (Hunter Biden was a lobbyist) in the finance arena. It usually has to do with that guy–the Senator/now-Veep, himself.
So, what was Joe Biden’s role in all of this?